You awaken feeling strangled, coughing and choking as you fall to your hands and knees. Your eyes open wearily - and you see nothing. Gasping for air, you glance about wildly, disoriented, and realize to your horror that you're in the middle of a vast, black emptiness. Terrified, you instinctively grasp at the void about you for something - anything - solid. You realize that despite the enveloping darkness, your arms glow with a strange light - suddenly you pause and rack your brain for any hint as to what's going on. The last you remember clearly is being sold to Tartarus Inc. You remember them strip-searching you, your last possessions taken away before the coarse-mannered guards threw you into an empty cell. Everything about it seems a struggle to recall - clouded and fogged as though a distant memory.

A glow brightens to your right - in surprise and slight fear, you scoot back across the floor as you try to assess the new threat. A human form, dressed in a Tartarus jumpsuit, appears and crumples to the floor, choking and gasping for breath.

I'm so sorry, the voice says with an air that makes it clear her words are merely a formality. I understand that this experience is mentally agonizing. We're far from perfecting cryotech, you see, but you are here to help us correct that. You are our test subjects. If you ever want to awaken, both of you will cooperate. You've always cooperated with us before, so I have no doubt you'll do so now.

Your mind whirls. You vaguely remember being pulled from your isolation cell - you remember being marched down a hallway, blindfolded, cuffed and gagged - something injected into your arm. That's all you remember. Cryotech? That doesn't even exist...

Then it sinks in: You've always cooperated with us before. "Before???"

It's "brain maintenance," the voice explains in a resigned, curt tone, as though she's said it a hundred times. Cryotech has a tendency to leave one vegetative. Now, the both of you... make your decision, and we will begin.

The void hums, and shivers to life - six pale, golden hexagons of light appear pm the floor around you, spaced well apart. On each: a short paragraph of text.

You feel like you've done this before.

But which to stand upon? And who is this person next to you?

Illegal rescue
One of your best friends and accomplices is being held captive on a federal defense outpost in orbit around the moon Jimis A to await the arrival of a Mimir vessel. You've managed to get past the hangars - now do whatever it takes to rescue your pal. Your identities won't stay hidden for long.

Fleeing suspect
A major suspect in one of your recent investigations has figured out you were tailing him and fled into "the bad side of town" on Orthus Etienne V - specifically, a hideout for a major local gang, the Black Serpents. You're left with no choice but to follow him through and hope you emerge unscathed.

Terrorist attack
Walking through a busy town, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a mass terrorist attack. Do you assist the terrorists, the townsfolk, or just walk away without choosing sides?

Fleeing vigilantes
Your small vigilante team has just finished tracking down a group of supposed terrorists... only to realize they were actually undercover government plants, and their backup was on the way. Surrounded, you need to escape - and will probably have no choice but to kill some of the cops to do it.

Governmental espionage
You're part of a rebel faction seeking to overthrow the government on a midworld planet - Elbacrow 8 - for unfair treatment of its citizens. You've learned that the government plans to purge a smaller district to send a message to the rebels, and have obtained disguises and entered a core government facility. Now you must learn of their plans - before it's too late.

Something different
You are thrown into a random mission without any idea of what you're up against. It may or may not suit your abilities and loadout.A question mark dominates this particular hexagon.

- This is canon, but your character does not necessarily need to remember it. You have the OOC option to have a mindwipe of the experience post-tryout/pre-campaign. Whether your teammate's character remembers the experience is up to them.
- This is VR. You know this, but your character does not necessarily know this. Whether your character can figure it out is up to your discretion.
- A spaceship silhouette means the mission is CASKET-based.
- Your mission selection is quasi-randomly assigned with a weighted algorithm that takes your personalities, stats, skills, and official loudout into account.
- On average, half your tryout points will come from the tryout mission itself. You are being judged from the moment the thread is posted.
- Each team will have their own tryout thread. Do not post in someone else's thread.
- Type in ((out of character parentheses)) in the tryout thread if you feel it necessary. No need to post elsewhere - it's your thread and no one else's, so you needn't feel bad about cluttering it up.
- There are no maps. As this is VR, it uses "fluid space" as REKT VR traditionally has - that is to say, if you imagine something is there, it may well be there (unless I say it isn't). In a forest and need cover? Say there's a tree next to you and duck behind it. This will probably work. Want a bigger weapon? Say you pick up your death ray from behind the counter - but don't be surprised if I say there's nothing there. Use common sense and don't try to cheat the system - and above all, ignore nothing that I say.
- To activate your choice, both of you must stand on your golden hexagon.
- If you die, that's okay. If you die within the first turn or two, that's not okay.
- Don't be surprised if I cut the mission short. I almost certainly will. These are not meant to be full missions - it is merely a sample to judge from.
- Asking for ideas from other people is completely permitted. Offering ideas is completely permitted as well - as long as you don't do it in someone else's thread.
- Poor performance of your teammate does not mean you do any more poorly in the tryout. You are judged separately.
- I will be judging a number of things, but can't give specifics without compromising the judging process.
- Have fun! If it's not fun for you, let me know, and I'll try to switch things around.

I fight down the initial panic of my awakening, listening to the mysterious voice explain things as I struggle to remember exactly how I got here. After getting my bearings and remembering Tartarus, I shake myself and look around for a moment, noting the hexagons and my companion. The seemingly featureless surroundings make sense, I guess- it's not like cryofrozen people need light after all. I turn to my companion. "Yeah, I'm fine. What about you? And what's your name, by the way? I'm Caleb." Eyeing him cautiously, I hold out my hand for him to shake.

"Nice to meet you too, Frank.
Yeah, I was expecting to hear the dulcet tones of SCAMPS yelling at us. As for where we are, I'd guess the cryo bay of the Tartarus. I was expecting to feel a bit worse after being frozen, though..."
I attempt to peer into the darkness to make out my pod but fail, wondering just who the hell designed this place. Do the Tartarus employees run around in here with night-vision gear or something?
Shaking my head, I turn towards Frank. "It looks like they want us to pick a mission. I'd personally be partial to the terrorist attack one- always be nice to shoot some terrorists in the face," I say, smiling humorlessly.

I nod in thought. The room is still pretty weird, but I can put that behind me for the moment. Hopefully the situation will become clearer later on. "That woman who was talking to us earlier said something about 'brain maintenance,' and us being in cryosleep. I'd expect they wake us up every now and then to make sure we still work correctly after a bit in cryo. That's probably what this is."

Seeing Frank step onto the terrorist hexagon, I do the same, keeping watch for anything happening around the room as I do so.

Terrorist attack
Walking through a busy town, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a mass terrorist attack. Do you assist the terrorists, the townsfolk, or just walk away without choosing sides?

The hexagon below your feet glows to a bright, brilliant gold, shining up around you, casting flickering shimmers across the clothes of you and your companion, rising upwards in a climbing crescendo of light as it drowns out all else - so strong you can almost feel it - almost taste it -

- and then, with a flash... it's gone. There is nothing.

There isn't sound - there isn't light - not even your hands are visible. It's as though naught exists but your thoughts, and that in a vacuum. The world around you darkens even further for a moment - blacker than your mind can even process.

And all is quiet.

It stays that way... but only for a moment.

Suddenly everything around you is hustling, bustling - a busy town street beneath a large orange-yellow sun in the sky that casts a strange, warm glow on the marketplace. You find yourself squinting in the sunlight, almost overwhelmed with the noise of the city. As your eyes adjust, focusing on your surroundings, you get a better look at where you are.

It's a rather idyllic town square; at least midworld by the looks of it - or perhaps wealthy outworld - but with an old-fashioned, retro appearance. Very tall, multi-floor stone-and-wood structures dominate the skies and landscape of this iron-heavy rust world; reddish sands lay in slumped piles against the walls and market stalls. The people, though - all human - are dressed in Coreworld garb - smart fabrics, delicate meshes, lots of colors and skin showing. This nearly rules out outworld planets, and many midworld planets as well. The people themselves are mixed - some caucasian, some asian, with a healthy smattering of other skin tones. Not a one of them notices that you've appeared unceremoniously in their busy street as they rush about to the various holo-lined shops and blinking signs down the way.

A red-haired woman bumps your arm as she rushes past, apologizing over her shoulder as she catches up to her child. Upon reaching the little boy, she scoops him up and deposits him on her hip, scolding him in perfect Galactic Standard. A man down the road skillfully manipulates a holokinetic display to rearrange the prices outside his shop, before quickly heading back inside. A group of teenage boys, laughing boisterously, pour out of a nearby pub of some kind, wandering about and catcalling at various people until they find a group of young women that seem to appreciate their attention. Amidst all this, a loosely-swarming crowd of people moves chaotically, almost buzzing with activity and voices. You can make out further levels of this towering city underground beneath the rusty metallic grate you stand upon, though they don't seem quite as busy as the surface.

It's a pretty sight, and you feel slightly warmed - although you soon attribute this warmth to the noonday sun, beating down on you from above. There's a light breeze blowing from the east - and with it, a faint, barely detectable smell of something delicious - some sort of fried herbs and vegetables. Part of you would love to spend some time relaxing here.

That's when you notice several small groups of white-robed, red-crossed men emerging from stairwells to the underground, all about this busy plaza - the traditional garb of Kristian cultists. You can faintly make out the shape of weapons concealed beneath their robes - and there's at least twelve cultists total. They don't seem quite ready to attack, but... this could be bad.

I start as the simulation, because that has to be what it is, boots up. The quality of the simulation is amazing- it really feels like I'm standing here! After a moment, however, I shake myself. If the message on the hexagon was to be believed, there's going to be an attack here soon.

I look for any convenient cover- if there is indeed an imminent attack, I'll want to get in cover quickly, otherwise I won't last too long in the open.

While looking around, I notice the cultists.

While not firing on them yet, I keep a close eye on them. If they make any move to draw their weapons, I won't let them fire first.

If the cultists attempt an attack:
-I take cover in the most convenient spot that will still provide some protection (and that isn't a person)
-I pull my laspistol and fire at the most dangerous looking one, switching to next-dangerous if he goes down, for a max of 4 shots.

((EDIT: changed actions a bit now that I know where Frank is))

Last edited by cuisinart8 on Sat Apr 08, 2017 10:44 am, edited 3 times in total.

((1: When our characters got accepted into the REKT program, did they get some kind of catalogue to choose their weapons from? Or when, before the cryo, did they get the chance to choose their equipment?
2: How common is knowledge of VR outside of military circles?
3: We do have our weapons with us, right? ))

((1. You haven't been accepted into the REKT program yet. The cryoprograms simply guessed what your character would want. They had similar tech back on the Tartarus, if you remember.
2. Just say what you think would be most fun to roleplay. VR is ubiquitous; BCIVR (brain-computer interface virtual reality) is a semi-recent development and prohibitively expensive for all but larger coreworld militaries (and Tartarus, of course). It's not impossible that you've heard of it, though, but the farther you get from the core worlds, the more likely you are to have urban myths mixed in with the truth.
3. Yes, you are both carrying your full weapons loadout in the sim. Note: You were not until the full sim activated; in the black zone, you were weaponless.))

*Staggering for a moment because of the sudden change in scenery. Gasping*

"B- By the eternal one! This-? How-? Wha-?"

*Upon seeing the cultists and remembering the text on the hexagon*

"Oh no...that many of them...and so many civilists!"

*Noticing the unfamiliar yet somewhere known weight of the crossbow and the bolts*This...I shouldn't know these! But...wait! Cryo! Brain-Maintenance! This situation...it's all not real! It's...I read about this in some papers...simulations directly fed into the nervous system...But it was somwhere in development...and this...oh damn it all! Not enough time for all this!

Try to remember infos about the cultists. Things like overall hostility, average composition of the members (Age/motivation).
I look around, hoping to find a nearby guard/policeman/otherwise openly armed person of authority.
If I find one I get over to him/her and speak up to them to get their attention. Keep the cultists in view though.
- Point at the cultists and tell them that they're most likely armed and probably planning something dangerous. Point out that they wouldn't hide their equipment if they weren't about to do something bad.

If the cultists attempt attacking.
- Yell: "EVERYONE DOWN!".
- Throw myself to the ground.
- Draw the crossbow and load a sharp/solid bolt.
- Shoot at the closest cultist I have a free line of view to.

Crawl behind cover (something not living)
Load a tranquilizer bolt into the Crossbow
If a cultist comes around the corner
- Shoot him with the tranquilizer

"Damn! I can't even try to use an explosive bolt with all those people around here!"